Oh, it's weird talking to you because of your name. Whatever happens don't marry the commenter named Jason because then he'd become Jason commenter or you'd become commenter Jason and it would get very confusing.

Here's a big and showy late-night snack. Experimental rice rolls that are not quite makisushi, assembled in an attempt to discover uses bonito flakes in another way besides katsuobushi dashi, which in combination with kombu dashi is an essential base for miso soup. Kombu is a brittle dried kelp.

Kombu is weird stuff. You must first wipe off the salt and minerals that collect on the surface, then soak if hot water as you slowly bring it to a light simmer. This should take twenty minutes. Usually the kombu is discarded after soaking. At that point it has expanded and released its flavor into the water, but I like to roll it then by using careful and even chiffonade cuts, create kombu noodles. These dark green narrow strips are very interesting. They remain firm and perfectly toothsome, a little bit rubbery, and it's healthy too. I do not understand why it's not more popular.

Have you noticed my online inflection changing? I've been switching between Mac and PC laptops.

Wolfram Alpha is interesting conceptually. It reminds me a bit too much of the I-Ching calculator from Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, though.

(I'm waiting for an answer to be, "A suffusion of yellow")

If you type in a first name into Wolfram Alpha, it gives you some interesting charts, here's Ann, and here's Lem (sorry Lem, you aren't so much a person as you are an municipal airport).

Also, if you want to hear Leo Laporte interview the genius behind Stephen Wolram, fast forward to the last half hour of This Week in Tech, Ep 195.

Wolram explains some of what Alpha is, and what it's not, it is NOT a search engine like Google, instead it's a computational engine using the symbolic language he developed for Mathematica, and it will 'evolve' as it gets asked more questions. Still trying to figure out how to ask the right question so that it will spit out sure fire picks on the ponies.

(and how is it that our National Spelling Bee has all sorts of Canadians, as well as entrants from China, Jamaica, and New Zealand?) A paucity of local contestants combined with a dearth of foreign competitions?